Ritual (Season 5, Episode 14)
Premise: A young boy’s mutilated body is found beside the remains of what looks like a religious sacrifice, and the investigation uncovers a trade in children smuggled from Nigeria.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 14
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Odafin “Fin” Tutuola (Ice-T), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek), ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal), ME Dr. Melinda Warner (Tamara Tunie), CSU Ryan O’Halloran (Mike Doyle), Defense Attorney Trevor Langan (Peter Hermann)
- Guest stars
- Michael Emerson as Allan Shaye, Trini Alvarado as Maggie Shaye, Barry Shabaka Henley as Asante Odufemi, Erika Alexander as Kema Mabuda, Malika Samuel as Na’imah Haruna
- Director
- Ed Bianchi
- Writers
- Ruth Fletcher Gage & Christos N. Gage
Summary
“Ritual” opens with a parks cleanup crew finding the dismembered torso of a Black boy of about seven near a lake, beside bowls of blood and a votive candle. Warner finds that his throat was cut while he was alive and that his body was hung to drain. The candle, linked to Santería, leads through an importer to Asante Odufemi’s Center for the Study of Santería, which refuses to give up its membership list. A judge grants a warrant after neighbors report children and screams at the center, but the search finds only animal remains, and Odufemi says no believer would harm a child beside water sacred to the protector of children.
Isotope tests show the boy had lived his whole life in Nigeria and arrived in New York only about four weeks earlier. A Nigerian consular official, Kema Mabuda, explains how children are trafficked and passes on a call from a girl searching for her brother, Ajani. Munch and Fin trace the call to a wealthy home, where Ajani’s sister, Na’imah Haruna, works long days without pay and is locked in the cellar. Her employer, Marion Laymon, is arrested under the federal involuntary-servitude law and, with Trevor Langan beside her, admits she paid a fee and chose the girl at a Long Island City warehouse. There the detectives find a group of children locked inside and left behind, and one, Kwasi, remembers a white man with candy who took Ajani and liked the carved doll he carried.
The doll is an ikenga carved by Ajani’s great-great-grandfather. The Santería center’s records show that art dealer Maggie Shaye, who was abroad on a buying trip when Ajani died, bought a box of the candles, and an ikenga on her desk was a gift from her husband, Allan Shaye, an art history professor. The Shayes’ home has been bleached and resealed, and Allan’s research assistant has the beaded pouch Ajani’s mother made. Allan is arrested and denies everything, but Maggie recalls that he asked for the key to her storage room below the gallery.
Spoiler, the ending: In that basement, Forensics Tech. Ryan O’Halloran follows a trail of blood to a crate addressed to Shaye in Nepal that holds the rest of the boy’s body. Facing a possible death sentence, Shaye cooperates and names Martin Bosa, a Nigerian who arranges smuggling. An undercover purchase falls through, and Bosa is caught after a chase in which Fin has to be pulled off him. Bosa expects a brutality complaint to protect him, but Mabuda says his passport has been revoked and threatens to have him sent home. He gives up a truck arriving that night, and police stop it and lead out the children inside.
Why it stands out
- Michael Emerson guest-stars as professor Allan Shaye, with Trini Alvarado as his wife, Maggie.
- Erika Alexander plays Nigerian consular official Kema Mabuda, and Barry Shabaka Henley plays Santería leader Asante Odufemi.
- Recurring characters Trevor Langan, the defense attorney, and forensics technician Ryan O’Halloran both appear.